Only five miles covered today, but in those five miles we've come through 34 locks and 2 swing bridges.
We set off after breakfast from Devizes basin at 9:15 and straight into our first lock. Of course it was empty and so were the next three we came to. This worked in our favour though, as another boat caught up to us. This was great as they had a crew of 14 souls. Just in time to help us down Caen hill. Quite a sight from the top.
We worked up a good rhythm and soon we were ticking off the locks at a respectable rate.
The lock keeper has a new nemesis, the Wigan flight is easy after this lot. Plus everything works on the Wigan flight and the locks fill quickly. Not here they don't
By 1pm we were at the bottom.
If anything the view back up the hill is even more stunning.
The captain was pleased,
but that's not the end of it.
There are another 7 locks waiting for you round the corner and we had to do these by ourselves. They were all running in our favour and we soon got through them. Which lead us onto a lovely two mile lock free stretch with just 2 swing bridges, one of which was stuck of course!
Then came another flight of 5 locks, we got through them by 5pm and called it quits for the day. Not many miles covered but we've had to work for them.
On the plus side there are now only 15 locks left between us and Bristol.
